Happening in NYC: Trump revealed in a Fox News interview that he has not returned to New York City because “going back is very expensive” and that he feels “guilty”. (NYPost)

Happening on Campus: Yuhong Li, a filmmaker of a documentary project “Family Album: 100 Chinese Family Stories Uncovered”, started by students of the University in Hong Kong will be at Columbia on May 1 to screen four films, the description of which can be found in here.

Apr

Bwog Staffer and a Taiwanese student who can not wait to get the heck back to his country, Timmy Wu, shares his experience at a talk at Weatherhead Asian Institute, on the topic of dictatorship and secret police of authoritarian regimes in Taiwan and the Philippines.

Taiwan has not always been a democratic boba tea fairyland under the constant pressure of a giant authoritarian neighbor. While it has been portrayed in the medias as the first Asian “country” (if I may call it so), to ever democratized (and in a month from now, perhaps to legalize same-sex marriage), it was not without incidents of massacres, bloodshed and shady disappearances of pro-democracy activists that it finally came to be what it is today, a country more free than the land of the free. In fact, I have always considered it quite a miracle, how within the time span of thirty years, Taiwan would be able to transform from a society that was infiltrated by probably the highest density of intelligence personals from an authoritarian regime of Chiang Kai-shek, to a full-fledged democracy. In the talk today with Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department of the University of Missouri, on her book: Dictators and their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence, I was able to get a fresh take on how such drastic transition from authoritarianism to democracy might have gone down.

Apr

Another semester has passed. Half of your 70000$ tuition is down the drain. You have been going every financial/investment banking/consulting events, but you still don’t know if you really want to go down that path. Maybe you are unsatisfied with your majors. Maybe you still don’t know what you want to study. Maybe you don’t know when you will finally gather up the will power to do your laundry. But everything is fine, you know that Bwog will always be at Lerner 505 at 7 pm on these glorious Sundays, waiting for you. You know there will be groceries, sweets that will make everything less painful.

Apr

Bwog staff writer and daily editor, Timmy Wu, reflects on his first year of College life, and presents to you a rare, indecisive reflection on Columbia.

Today had to have been the six-thousandth time that I saw campus tour guides herding prospective students and their parents into Furnald, pointing out the woodwork of the lobby and the top-notch facilities. They filed into the abnormally large model room. There was no laundry from three weeks ago, no hidden bottles of whiskey and wine, no hair intertwined in the polyester fibers on the carpet. In the prospective students’ pamphlet, there are statistics, polished ones that don’t necessary translate into what you experience in Columbia. There are resources for the unquenchable, ever-expanding young minds, it wrote. There are spaces where you could talk about the things you cared about. There are gazillion clubs where you will find people who share your interests, with whom you will build a relationship that lasts forever after bouts and bouts of social anxieties, feeling of isolation and loneliness.

Like traveling through a tunnel, looking at the bright light yonder, you dived into Columbia, accepted the admission offer with naive ecstasy, without knowing that, shit, you have to get through these hours of very very nasty feelings. So here is a fluffy Bwoglove to those classmates with whom you suffered in First Year Arabic class, friends whom you immediately called after you woke up from a night of debauchery, and finally, clubs that somehow (mistakenly) did not reject you. Hold on to them. Tell them you thank them for getting through this rugged year by your side, tell them that you are willing to go to Ferris if they are feeling extra adventurous today.

Apr

Happening in the world: Amid high tension in the Korean peninsula, after the US warns North Korea that its “strategic patience” is over, North Korea detained Kim Dong-chul, a 62-year-old naturalized US citizen born in South Korea. (BBC)

Happening in the US: Us actress Erin Moran, best known for playing Joanie in sitcom Happy Days in the 1970’s has died at age 56. (BBC)

Happening on campus: Matthew Casey wil be at Sulzberger Hall 3rd Floor Parlor, presenting his new book Empire’s Guest Worker, that discusses the “on-the-ground experiences of Haitian migrants in Cuba” and how their actions shaped “larger processes of US imperialism, economic penetration, race-making and shifts in global migration policies”.

Want to know how to write hit songs like The Chainsmoker, here is a tutorial:

Apr

In this glorious holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, when you run around hunting for Jesus-blood stained Easter eggs that actually (and disturbingly) symbolized empty tombs, you may feel like: on this slow crawl to the eventual death and finals, maybe you could use a resurrection too! Well, Bwog is here to help! Come to Lerner 505 at 7 pmtoday so you can receive a “Fuck Spec” sticker to finalize your resurrection and if you have something to preach, we will even broadcast it to the masses for you!

Apr

Wondering what that bitter, metallic taste in your mouth is? A mix of regret and shame, a lot of alcohol and probably a small portion of leftover vomit hiding in the deep crevices of your eating hole! After a day of excessive drinking, Bwog is here to help you ease the hangover, so you can hide your pain, hide your vices and put on a big, winner smile for those admitted student class of 2021. Show them the side of Columbia that they would not see if they decided to come!

Bwog will be holding a detox session tonight at 7 pm, so we can all talk about campus news, gossips and resuscitate our livers. Students from Days of Campus are welcomed to join us! Bring your friends, last night hookups, and your pitches. We will meet you at Lerner 505, 7 pm.

Happening in NYC: Man-spreading on the subway? You may want to think twice. An argument sparked by a subway rider man-spreading resulted in a brawl with hammer and a hammer-beaten victim. (NY daily news)

Apr

Today is the annual Reconciliation Day. It is time to make up with those exes that break up with you through text messages, with those friends that stabbed you at the back, with those friends at whose back you stabbed, with that special someone who faded out your life, with whom you shared a complicated, un-labelable relationship. This is a day when even Speccies could come to a Bwamily meeting, where the evil meet the good, where we could come together, share pitches, and eat groceries.

Apr

In light of the numerous tragedies, a fellow Columbia student Alexandra Bass will be leading an event today at 1 pm, where people could “come together outside on campus to create a mural composed of drawings, words, and images that answer the question “what makes you happy?” Celebrating our differences and recognize our similarities, this art project is a great way people can gather and connect.

Happening in the nation: Famous Fox News personality, Bill O’Reilly, was said to have paid 5 women a total of 13 million dollars over the years for agreeing not to pursue litigation or publicize their accusations against him. (The NY Times)

Mar

Bwog sent a staff writer Vivian Klotz to the opening performance of Black Theatre Ensemble’s Festival of One Acts last night. Always in search of a good deal, the writer appreciated being able to see four plays for the price of one. The show is running once more in the Glicker-Milstein Theatre, Saturday, March 25, at 7 pm. Tickets are $5 with CUID/BCID and $7 without.

The first play, Colder than Winter, opened with a dimly lit stage, bare, with the exception of a single man. Soft music played in the background, the warm sound of the saxophone, overlaid with his voice, rising and falling. The audience had no choice but to be caught up in his words and be held captive as he moved around the stage.

This first scene lay the groundwork for the rest of the production and the three that followed. All four writers proved that they didn’t need fancy scenery or musical numbers to be memorable; in fact, the lack of distractions is precisely what made this festival great. One of the most memorable moments dawned the first play as a young black girl lay dead on stage, her friends gathered round, one of them telling the story of her first encounter with death. There’s no background music for life, and accordingly, silences in her monologue were thunderous.

The four plays explored important ideas; the first play emphasized the tendency for many straight, black men to be blind to the privileges that he may experience that black women and queer black people do not, and the third included a black wlw who attempted to make her friends realize that wlw is more than an attraction, just as black is more than a skin color. The second play took the audience on a journey to find truth in all her terrible forms, and the final one provided a humorous, original take on a haunted house story as a ghost attempted to scare a family out of their home, only to find that she wasn’t the only ghost home. Some of the stories told were uniquely black stories, but many also included characters who just happened to be black, providing space to prove that white doesn’t have to be the default.

Black Theatre Ensemble is well respected for its history of making high-quality productions, and this is no exception. Tech had a few brief moments of slow lighting changes, none of which detracted from the plays being visually interesting with great lighting choices and high-quality, well-chosen music. Overall, it was an exceptional performance on the part of all involved.

The next and final showing is today at 7 pm in the Glicker-Milstein Theatre. Tickets are $5 with CUID/BCID.

Mar

Happening in the world: Protesting against a tax levied on the unemployed, Belarus protesters took it to the streets, angered by the tax that President Alexander Lukashenko said would “instill” discipline to the workshy. (BBC)